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Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. Our guests are a who's who of the international sports industry talking about the big issues.
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Ted Knutson's career tracks a remarkable arc: professional gambler at Pinnacle, architect of Brentford's analytics-driven recruitment model, founder of StatsBomb — built from a blog written during cancer recovery into a global data company sold to Hudl in 2024 — and now Strategic Director of Football at Crux, Bex Smith's women's multi-club platform, while running The Transfer Flow newsletter and podcast. This is a conversation about what data actually means when real money is on the line, and...
Today, we are joined by Ben Curtis, Global Brand Vice President for Rexona—the brand known as Degree in the US, Sure in the UK, and Shield in South Africa. Ben oversees the global strategy for a brand that Unilever identifies as the "cultural engine" of its Personal Care business group, making it the primary vehicle for activating their massive FIFA and UEFA partnerships. As the marketing world prepares for the unprecedented scale of the FIFA World Cup in North America, we are diving deep int...
1Bex Smith, is our guest today on Other People’s Money, Unofficial Partner’s sports finance series presented with regular cohost Matt Rogan. Bex Smith was captain of the New Zealand Women’s football team, appearing at World Cups, two Olympic Games, and enjoyed a stellar club career including winning German football’s triple. Crux Football is her investment vehicle for investing in to the women's club game. The organisation currently owns Montpellier in France and Sweden's Rosengard...
What T20 Cricket Teaches Every Sport About The Race For The Global Fan. Mike Jakeman joins Richard for Inside Edge, the business of cricket series. Guests: Finn Bradshaw, Head of Digital, ICC Edward Fitzgibbon, Managing Director, NYZ Consulting. Twenty20 cricket is one of the great product innovations in modern sport. Compact, volatile, accessible to anyone with three hours and a phone signal, it has done something fifty-over cricket never managed: it compressed the development ti...
Barney Francis offers an insider's view of the sports media economy, drawing on his huge experience as MD of Sky Sports in the UK and EVP, Studios at IMG, the company's production business. The conversation spans new sports formats, piracy, streaming disruption, rights economics, the creation of The Hundred, the Premier League's move to in-house production, and the structural challenges facing rugby in the UK. New Formats: Additive vs DisruptiveResilience of Incumbent Rights HoldersPir...
Richard is joined by regular Bundle co-hosts Yannick Ramcke and Murray Barnett. Yannick is General Manager of OTT at the streaming service OneFootball and Murray is founder of 26West Sport and formerly of F1, World Rugby and ESPN. Subscribe to The Bundle Bulletin, via Unofficial Partner's Substack Newsletter. Today's topics: Advertising Renaissance: ITV’s Six Nations in-game advertising (worth 20% of total inventory value) signals broader inflation, with technology approaching rea...
Pete Fitzboydon, former CEO of Sussex County Cricket Club, reveals the stark financial realities facing non-Test hosting counties. With only 7 out of 50-60 annual playing days generating profit, counties survive primarily on ECB funding - approximately £3m of a £5-10m turnover. The conversation explores The Hundred's transformative impact, selling the longer game, and the future shape of English domestic cricket in a franchised world. This episode of the Unofficial Partner podcast is brought ...
Sally Munday is CEO of UK Sport, one of the most influential positions in the sports industry. On Friday the 2026 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games begins in Milan-Cortina. How many medal will Team GB win? How much will each medal cost? And why does that matter? UK Sport distributors around £100 million annually in public funds from the National Lottery and the Exchequer, supporting high-performance Olympic and Paralympic sports and athletes. For the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic cycle, th...
Ryan Norys is the Chief Revenue Officer at Tottenham Hotspur. This is a candid conversation about the commercial fortunes of the club as it brings the front of shirt sponsorship to market at a time of genuine uncertainty. Spurs finished 17th last season. Commercial revenue grew 40% in three years. That tension runs through the entire discussion. Norys' journey to Spurs was via City Football Group, WME, the LA Dodgers and Miami Dolphins. Now he's navigating the post-Levy era, the post-Son era,...
THE BILLION DOLLAR RACE: WHO WINS SPORTS AI? There's a race on. Bloomberg Terminal for sport. Sports Business GPT. The industry's operating system. Who builds it first? THE LAST FRONTIER "Once you give away that level of knowledge, it's gone. This is the last frontier before all your intelligence is gone." — Craig Hepburn Live from Fuse UK, featuring Craig Hepburn (ex-UEFA), Richard Ayers (Rematch), Sean Betts (Omnicom), Andy Shora & Chris Woodcock (TFG Labs and 21st Group). BIG QUESTIONS...
What if we could fix the conference panel? You know the format—interesting people, good intentions, and about ninety percent of it forgotten by the time you reach the bar. Chat_UP Live was held at FUSE headquarters in London. Rather than just another AI panel, we ran an experiment. Working with the team at TFG Labs, we built a custom AI co-pilot that captured the onstage conversation in real time, took in audience questions, and offered evidence-based responses that pushed the discussion in g...
Welcome to The Bundle, our regular series on the sports media and streaming marketplace with co-hosts Yannick Ramcke, General Manager of OTT at the streaming service OneFootball and Murray Barnett, founder of 26West Sport and formerly of F1, World Rugby and ESPN. This episode of the Unofficial Partner podcast is brought to you by Sid Lee Sport. Sid Lee Sport is the fame-making creative and sponsorship agency for brands in sport. Through exceptional creativity, deep sponsorship expertise, and ...
Nikki Doucet has the most interesting job in British sport and one of the most difficult. Certainly, everyone in the sports business has an opinion on what the CEO of WSL Football should do to capitalise on the potential of women's professional football in England. The role wrestles with many of the conflicts and trade offs currently at play across the sports business - open vs closed leagues, sport as entertainment, the anti-DEI lobby vs progressives culture wars, the changing definiti...
David Cushnan and James Emmett of Leaders in Sport join Richard on the final podcast of the year to review the people, stories and events that mattered in 2025. Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner We publish two podcasts each week,...
Richard Gillis is joined by Damian Browarnik from WSC Sports, the content and data platform working with over 650 clients including the NBA, NFL and La Liga, and Rich Johnson, sports marketing strategist and cofounder of End Product, formerly of Man Utd, New Balance and Social Chain. The conversation explores how algorithms now dictate sports content discovery, why millennials remain the commercial core while Gen Z follows athletes over teams, and what winning looks like in an era...
The Bundle is our long running series on the sports media and streaming marketplace with co-hosts Yannick Ramcke, General Manager of OTT at the streaming service OneFootball and Murray Barnett, founder of 26West Sport and formerly of F1, World Rugby and ESPN. This episode of the Unofficial Partner podcast is brought to you by Sid Lee Sport. Sid Lee Sport is the fame-making creative and sponsorship agency for brands in sport. Through exceptional creativity, deep sponsorship expertise, and flaw...
Today's guest is Dan Jamieson, who is chief executive and co-owner of ICONS, the world's biggest signed football memorabilia company. ICONS was founded in 1999, originally starting as an editorial website for footballers to connect directly with fans. The business successfully pivoted to focus on signed memorabilia, a niche subset of the broader merchandise market, valued at hundreds of millions annually within football. ICONS focuses on exclusive partnerships with superstars, hol...
Inside Edge is our cricket business series with co-host Mike Jakeman. Today's guest is Venkat Ananth on the money circling the IPL franchises. Check out Venkat's newsletter and blog, State of Play. This episode of the Unofficial Partner podcast is brought to you by Sid Lee Sport. Sid Lee Sport is the fame-making creative and sponsorship agency for brands in sport. Through exceptional creativity, deep sponsorship expertise, and flawless on-site delivery, they help brands, sponsors, and r...
Olympic marketing pioneer Michael Payne discusses his book Fast Tracks and Dark Deals, exploring how sport became business through the lens of legendary figures like Horst Dassler, Bernie Ecclestone and Mark McCormack. He challenges federations on governance, examines whether the Olympics inhibits innovation, and addresses future issues including AI, implanted technology, and the Enhanced Games debate. Payne reflects on Beijing 2008's legacy, Trump's impact on LA 2028, and warns that politica...
This episode was recorded at the recent Sportradar Connect: Soccer Edition event at the London Stadium in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The podcast divides is in two parts. First is an onstage conversation on the evolution of football data analytics and AI featuring Jamie Carragher, Erik Durm and Nicolo D’Ercole. Jamie Carragher played 737 times for Liverpool and 38 times for England, in career that included the famous 2005 UEFA Champions League victory. Today he is one of ...
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